Veerabhadran Ramanathan

Most important awards, prizes and academies Academies: American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Geophysical Union; American Meteorological Society; 2002-date Member of U.S. National Academy of Sciences; Foreign Member, Academia Europea, Third World Academy of Sciences. Awards: 1995 Buys Ballot Medal, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences; 1997 Volvo Environment Prize; 2002 Rossby Medal, American Meteorological Society; 2004 Gutenberg Lecture.

Summary of scientific research
My fundamental interest is in understanding how human activities are influencing the climate and environment of this planet. In particular, I am focusing on how atmospheric gases, clouds and aerosols regulate the planetary greenhouse effect, solar radiative heating and climate. As a post doctoral fellow I identified the greenhouse effect of the vibration-rotation bands of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); on a per molecule basis, CFCs were about 10000 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. This surprising finding opened the door to the discovery of the greenhouse effect of numerous other trace gases and the field of trace gases-climate-chemistry interactions. Clouds, the Gordian knot of the climate problem, were my next focus. I designed a satellite radiation budget experiment along with NASA scientists, and demonstrated that clouds had a net cooling effect on the planet; i.e. the reflection of solar radiation to space by clouds far exceeded their greenhouse effect. This cloud radiative forcing data is still being used to validate climate models. My current interest is to understand the influence of sub-micron size manmade particles in the atmosphere. I designed (along with P.J. Crutzen) the Indian Ocean Experiment, which led to the discovery of the widespread South Asian Brown haze, and its surprisingly large impact in reducing the solar radiation at the surface, as it not only cools the region but could also lead to global drying. This work led to a UN initiated project to study the impact of such brown clouds worldwide. I am now designing an experiment using miniaturized instruments and unmanned aircraft to understand how the planet regulates its albedo.